“Piercings. If you do, I must warn you about the bed in the master bedroom. The top floor.”

“The bed.”

“Yes. Apparently you don’t want to crawl under it if you have any magnetic bits. Steel, iron. Or a pacemaker. Or a mechanical watch. The designers never mentioned that, when they showed me the plans. It’s entirely about the space underneath, visually. Magnetic levitation. But now I have to warn each guest in turn. Sorry.”

“I’m entirely as God made me, so far,” she told him. “And I don’t wear a watch.”

“Not to worry, then,” he said, cheerfully...

Bigend’s bed was a perfect black square, ten feet on a side, floating three feet above the ebony floor. She walked over to it and saw that it was tethered, against whatever force supported it, with thin, braided cables of black metal.